Doctor Who_ Space War - Malcolm Hulke [46]
She could see no means of escape. Two walls of the cell were solid rock; the other two ‘walls’ consisted of heavy iron bars from floor to the cave roof. A cage door was set in the bars, its huge primitive lock secure. Next door was another cell, empty and its door standing open. Jo looked longingly at the open cage door. Then as a thought struck her, she inspected the floor at the foot of the dividing iron bars. The bars between the two cells came down to a heavy iron girder that simply ‘sat’ on the hard earth floor. It would be possible to burrow under the girder and get into the next cell, like a rabbit burrowing under a wire-mesh fence. She started scratching at the earth but quickly realised it was too hard packed for her to make any impression. She looked at her torn bleeding fingers in despair.
Someone was coming. She heard the heavy pounding of an Ogron’s feet approaching down the rock-walled corridor. Instinctively she cowered to the back of the cell, fearing the torture was now to begin.
A single Ogron came into the flickering light. He carried a wooden bowl and earthenware jug. He stopped at the gate to her cell, produced a massive iron key and let himself in. ‘You eat.’
Jo came forward and took the bowl. It contained a substance like gruel, so stodgy that the spoon stood upright in it. ‘Thanks.’
The Ogron rubbed his stomach. ‘Food is good.’
‘Fabulous,’ she said.
‘You eat good, get big, become Ogron wife.’
‘There’s a thought,’ she answered. ‘Well, I’d better fatten myself up.’
‘Eat, get big.’ He put the jug of water down beside her, relocked the door and went away.
The food in the bowl had no taste at all. Then she suddenly realised that the spoon was made of strong metal. She put down the bowl, went back to the bars dividing the two cells and tried to scrape away the earth using the spoon. The hardness of the earth again defeated her efforts and she sank back on her haunches in despair. Then another thought came to her. She poured a little of the water on to the hard-packed earth. When she tried again to use the spoon she found she could move away some of the softened earth.
The General’s personal scout spaceship was one of the most advanced the Doctor had ever travelled in. A dozen Earth soldiers sat in a special compartment aft set aside for the General’s personal bodyguard. On the flight deck were the Draconian Prince. the Doctor, General Williams and the ship’s pilot. The Doctor was busy making calculations on a memo pad.
‘In thirty-four seconds,’ he told the pilot, ‘make a course correction to galactic co-ordinate 2349 to 6784.’
The pilot looked to General Williams for confirmation.
Williams nodded. ‘Do whatever the Doctor says.’ He turned to the Doctor. ‘You realise this course will take us into a completely uninhabited sector of the galaxy?’
‘It’ll take us to where we’ll find the Ogrons’ planet.’ The General looked less than convinced. ‘May I ask where you obtained this information?’
‘From the Master,’ replied the Doctor. ‘He fed the co-ordinates into his ship’s computer when I was his prisoner.’ He turned to the Draconian Prince. ‘When you captured the ship I extracted the information from the ship’s memory banks.’
The Prince spoke. ‘The female with whom you travel, the one who talks, you expect to find her on this Ogron planet?’
‘That is my hope,’ said the Doctor.
‘I hope so too,’ said the Prince. ‘You must educate her to be silent, then she will be a very nice person.’
The Doctor suppressed a smile.
Jo reckoned she had scraped away enough earth to make her escape. Lying on her back, gripping the heavy